LATIKA M BOURKE: How Penny Wong blasted a hole in Labor’s meticulous campaign with her comments on The Voice

Saint Penny’s halo slipped a little this week.

In bemoaning that within a decade the debate over the defeated Voice referendum will be similarly viewed as the fight for same sex marriage, Penny Wong has exposed herself as a hypocrite, out of touch, self-indulgent and has bowled a wrecking ball through the Prime Minister’s carefully managed campaign.

“I think we’ll look back on it in 10 years’ time and it’ll be a bit like marriage equality,” she said.

“I always used to say, marriage equality, which took us such a bloody fight to get that done, and I thought, all this fuss, it’ll become something like, people go ‘did we even have an argument about that?’”

Is she for real? Let’s check the tape for where Penny Wong stood when her party, led by the country’s first woman and unmarried prime minister, Julia Gillard, opposed gay marriage.

“On the issue of marriage, I think the reality is there is a cultural, religious, historical view around that which we have to respect,” Australia’s first openly gay parliamentarian and cabinet minister said in 2010.

With friends like these, it was no wonder gay marriage was a cause only realised when the Liberals, under former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull, took it up and eventually legalised it six years later.

Mr Turnbull’s then Attorney-General George Brandis said when he reached across the aisle for Labor’s help, he found Senator Wong remained tribal.

“Even though Penny passionately believed in gay marriage, when I was Leader of the Government in the Senate and closely involved in the legislation, she left me in no doubt whatsoever that I would get no cooperation from her,” Mr Brandis told The Nightly.

“There was no doubt in my mind that she wanted this to be a Labor party achievement and deeply resented that this would be a Liberal party achievement.”

So even if it were true that the debate on same sex marriage may come to mirror the way we retrospectively judge the 2023 Voice referendum result, history should remind of Senator Wong’s own political positioning.

But unlike the Voice, same-sex marriage was an issue the public not just overwhelmingly supported but were demanding, frustrated that politicians, like her, were too scared or deferential to party doctrine to do their jobs and pass a bill that reflected the community’s wishes and had to outsource the job in a plebiscite.

The Voice couldn’t have been more different. It was foisted onto unprepared voters who had little or no clue as to why they were being asked to consider creating an indigenous advisory body, and why right now.

The numbers don’t lie, same-sex marriage was endorsed by 61.6 per cent of the public — almost the same number rejected the Voice — 60.6 per cent.

So Senator Wong’s likening of the two debates exposes not so much that she thinks that the Voice is inevitable — thanks to her own party’s failure to prosecute it properly it definitely isn’t — but that she does not acknowledge the community’s reasons for its rejection.

And it is one of the most surprising elements of this Federal election that the biggest Labor stuff up didn’t come from the Prime Minister or a frenemy but that the friendly fire came from one of his closest allies and took place in the studios of the satirical news website Betoota Advocate.

Senator Wong’s first-ever podcast interview showcased the value of the format’s non-combative discussions as she talked about her love of food, sport and being gay, Asian and a woman in politics.

“I try to play a straight — that’s quite a funny joke from me — bat,” she quipped, when asked why she is so popular with non-Labor voters.

The Betoota boys successfully relaxed the famously frosty foreign minister and in a comfort zone of flattery, she made the rookie error.

The Opposition, having floundered several times this campaign, was overdue a government mistake.

It was perhaps with delicious irony that it came from the deified foreign minister who commits Opposition Leader Peter Dutton’s sin of accepting too few and mostly friendly media opportunities.

Political safe spaces are the most dangerous comfort zones of all in which to venture, particularly in the final week of an election campaign.

The Opposition pounced, releasing an ad on Thursday, featuring Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, the face of the No campaign, warning that Labor was hiding a true agenda of wanting to bring back the Voice.

It is telling that Senator Price is being placed front and centre of the Coalition’s final messages with 48 hours to go until polls close. Her mid-campaign clanger when she declared that she wanted to Make Australia Great Again — presumably in the mould of Donald Trump’s Make America Again movement — was evidently not so toxic that she had to be put in the freezer, indefinitely.

Could Penny Wong’s Voice stuff up neutralise Jacinta Price’s mega MAGA error?

Senator Wong’s comments have reopened the festering sore that is the Voice.

The prime minister, who often appears angry at the public for rejecting what was a hugely flawed proposal albeit prepared with noble intent, has run a million miles from how to progress truth, treaty and recognition, ever since.

He loathes being questioned about it at press conferences and during the 7 Network’s Leaders Debate appeared nervous when asked about it as well as whether Welcome to Country ceremonies are overdone.

Abandoning the question forever seems to be the prime minister’s policy, to the heartbreak of Indigenous supporters and nearly 40 per cent of the country, including many Labor voters who did and still do think constitutional recognition is not only necessary but overdue.

Which is why the Voice, while a no-go zone for the prime minister, remains a problem child for Labor. It remains his biggest mistake because it also served as a major distraction when inflation was raging and household budgets collapsing.

Until Senator Wong’s Betoota bungle this had largely remained in the past and Mr Albanese had rediscovered the confidence that the referendum defeat knocked from him.

This is why Senator Wong’s reflections are so harmful. Throwing the Voice into the final days of a campaign is the last thing he needs, and is no reward for the mostly disciplined campaign that he has run.

What is baffling is why Senator Wong would indulge in the ill-discipline now.

During the first weeks of the campaign, she was one of the Prime Minister’s travelling entourage but abhorred taking part in the daily media conferences. She would stand at a distance and decline to take questions related to her job, including when the campaign was dominated by the actions of the White House.

By contrast, Mr Butler, another left-faction leader and ally of the prime minister, has eagerly shouldered the load. He stands right next to or behind the prime minister and often steps in to answer when he can add detail or when he senses the prime minister is straining, giving his boss a few precious minutes to regroup to make it through the 45-minute media conference marathons.

Admittedly, Ms Wong’s reticence to take a more active frontline role appears to have been shared by the prime minister on at least one occasion, when a journalist asked if questions could be directed at the foreign minister about the US trade relationship.

“No … because it’s my press conference,” the prime minister said.

Perhaps the Betoota interview suggests why he’d prefer to own his own show!

For Labor has been eager to weaponise the US relationship and the US President’s behaviour for as long as they try and lump Trump with opposition leader Peter Dutton.

But they, and particularly the foreign minister, have been far less willing to discuss with the same intensity and frequency what a changed America means for Australia.

There will be no repudiation of the foreign minister. In Labor circles, she is feted, revered, and often canonised. As one of the Prime Minister’s allies, she is protected from criticism. He has rushed to her defence and urged people not to verbal his foreign minister.

Labor will hope to move on from Penny Wong’s mistake and make this election all about demonising Peter Dutton. But it won’t be forgotten that the often-beatified left-wing figure made the biggest stuff up of the campaign.